HMC Sherbourne 1763 by Gregor – FINISHED - Caldercraft – Scale 1:64 - first build

[Sailor1234567890]

Keep at it. Slow and steady wins the race.

[Jay 1]

Kester, I answered in my log.

[Hollander-jan]

Hello Gregor,

 

Thank you for the post and the following of my build. I am just a beginner as I see what you do I think there is a long way to go. But never the less I am building and all go's well. I am progressing in the build but have to calm down in order not make mistakes witch I will certainly do. For now I am having so much fun and joy in being here on the site and meeting wonderful skilled people. It is amazing how your ship is coming to live with all the detail. As I me and like Tony said "WELL DONE"!.

 

regards Jan.  

[Hollander-jan]

This is exactly what I like a wooden ship with no paint on the hull. It is ofcoarse everybodys one choice but I like the finish of wood. Also a great reference to my own build as I me say, there is only one word "WONDERFULL" I keep coming back to see your progress.

 

Merry Christmas and a very good 2014 

 

From Jan Rotterdam Holland

[Gregor]

It’s the season. Its pure kitsch, but I had to add it now. Feel free to hum or whistle an appropriate tune according to your personal taste or custom.

 

 

The brass bell was a gift. I used two 0.3 mm brass eyelets and a small piece of copper to mount it.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all. Thank you for all the encouragement and wisdom. I’m very much looking forward to seeing you again in 2014!

Gregor

Edited March 19, 2014 by Gregor

[Jay 1]

Gregor, the bell looks great!  Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year as well!  I'm looking forward to following your great build into the New Year!

 

Cheers,

Jay

[Gregor]

With Tony’s much appreciated help I built my version of jeer bitts with a windlass. 

 

 

A friend challenged me to make the windlass working – well, it turns around till the soldered handles break (almost instantly, to be fixed with superglue). The pawls don’t stop anything, but were fun to make.

I found another way to make the pawl drums: the brute force method, with pliers and a hammer.

 

 

Mounting the assembled jeer bitts, I foresee some headaches in the far future: Belaying will be difficult in the confined space between the main hatch and the cross piece.

 

 

The anchor cables will have to go around the jeer bitts, but this can be seen in contemporary models (the Hawke, in Goodwin’s Alert book).

All the best,

Gregor

 

Edited March 19, 2014 by Gregor

[Stockholm tar]

Gregor,

 

Very good work on both the jeer bitts and the bell, they look most authentic!

 

The anchor cable going around the crosspiece on the bitts probably wouldn't have mattered much, as it would have been hauled in by hand in any case, and veered on deck when letting go. I'm not too sure about the belaying pins though, as I would have thought them rather low to belay ropes around, and to accomodate the coils without getting them tangled.

 

Since I believe the bitts would have been used for various hauling jobs, I have an idea that rope stoppers would have been employed. These were short lengths of line, one end of which was probably fastened to a ringbolt in the deck near the bitts, the other end being temporarily bent to whatever line happened to be attached to the bitts at the time, and when it was at full hoist. This was then held fast be a crew member, taking the strain, whilst the line was quickly transferred from the bitts to its own belaying pin or cleat, which would have been in the vicinity or on the mast.

 

I have no definite proof of this and have not read anything about how the bitts were operated, but stoppers were frequently used for various jobs like this. They are also used on modern vessels. The stopper works partly by friction, it normally being half hitched around the halliard or whatever, the end then being wound around it against the lay. Apologies for bringing this up, but I thought it worth mentioning.

 

Gregor, a valiant effort in getting the mechanism to work! I have previously wondered about the length of the handles specified. Mine are short too, but I did wonder if their were possible extensions to lengthen them, when in operation. As they are, it seems as though only two people could be accommodated, one on each handle – which doesn't really seem sufficient manpower. My overactive brain again (!), but does anyone have any thoughts on this? 

[tkay11]

I love the idea of the pawls made with the pliers. Great work, Gregor. and interesting thoughts from Kester, as usual. Unfortunately I have no sailing experience whatsoever, apart from a couple of hours in a fishing boat off Mocambique which used just one sail. Oh, and a felucca for an hour. I don't even know what the terms 'bending' a rope or 'veering' an anchor mean. Time to use the search engine!

 

[edit] Also I forgot to mention your coamings. They look great, although the Alert plans show them just as squared off. I would have expected them to be rounded at the edges to reduce injuries, and I have seen them shaped like that in other models. Do you have particular reasons for the shaping of the coamings round the gratings? I might just reshape mine to follow your path.

 

Tony

Edited January 12, 2014 by tkay11

[Gregor]

Thanks, Kester and Tony -

 

When I read that "on full-sized vessels belaying was always logical" (Alert - Provenence and Construction, by N. Roger Cole Download ) I had a good laugh. Even after a beautiful week of Mediterranean cruising in a single master I couldn't understand how our friends and the skipper always knew which rope to pull.

My pins are there because I thought I had detected six holes in Tony's cross piece. They are not on Goodwin's Alert reconstruction, but are looking nice, and the holes had to be filled with something. The second reason was that George Bandurek's  belaying plan shows a few belaying points (he called it five rail) where we have the jeer bitts. As I have absolutely no idea of what (in the form of ropes and the like) will come from above, I thought it a good idea to have the pins ready.

Kester, I remember having seen the concept of rope stoppers in Dafi's Victory log. So I can proudly say that I have seen it in action on our diving boat after our anchor winch blew out.

But I saw that you have no pins on your cross piece, and your jolly boat would make it very uncomfortable for the crew to belay anything there. I will be very grateful to discover in your log where you are belaying what. And I will gladly come back to your explanations of the rigging when the time is ripe. It will be hard to follow, even when I try a translation into German, where (very northern) nautical terms are almost as foreign to my southern ears as the English ones.

 

As for the handles: It's possible to lengthen them temporarily with an iron tube (if the handles are forged by a proper blacksmith, as superglue is not invented yet). We do that sometimes with big bolt cutters (cutting a chain) to have more purchase. But I was also surprised by the almost primitive mechanism of this windlass. Even two cogwheels of different size would have offered a welcome transmission of power (not anachronistic: we are in the early stages of the industrial revolution).   

 

As for the coamings, Tony: I tried to build what I saw on the NMM plans, got carried away and made the main hatch the same as I have done with the scuttles. Next time I had a real look at the coamings on the plan, my hatch was glued to the deck, never to be removed again for fear of destroying the deck planks. (I was tempted, for a time).  So I would recommend to do the main hatch as shown on the NMM plans (I don't think the wellbeing of the crew was the most important aspect of ship design in 1763). But then again, we already had discussions about the reliability of the plans. Who knows what modifications were made in twenty years of service.

Cheers,

Gregor

 

 

Edited March 19, 2014 by Gregor

[tkay11]

Thanks, Gregor, for the info. I put holes into the cross piece exactly because of George Bandurek's build. I have no idea at all at this time of the belaying plan, and that's a problem for me because I don't yet understand the rigging -- having left that until I complete the deck. So the belaying pins are merely guess work on my part.

 

As for the ship's boat, I was reading the discussion in the build of the cutter Alert on this forum at http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/4993-naval-cutter-alert-by-anobiumpuncatum-scale-148-pof/?p=147403, and followed the link to Roger Cole's build of the Alert. I had already downloaded his notes on the Alert, but I had entirely forgotten about them. In these notes he makes the point that the ship's boat could not have been stowed on deck, but would have been towed because (a) the boat would have been too heavy for the spars to lift it out of the water, and ( it would have been much too much in the way of the rope handling.

 

Roger Cole also seems not to have any belaying pins on the cross-piece of his jeer bitts, and the design is interesting in that he includes supports for the jeer bitts that extend around the mast.

 

It's interesting that Roger Cole has left the coamings squared off. He clearly did a lot of research on the Alert, which is a slightly later vessel than the Sherbourne. However, I much prefer the look of yours!

 

By the way, I hadn't noticed the lovely pawls you have on your jeer bitts. Very nice work! I'll have to practise more!

 

Tony

[Gregor]

Well, Tony, we either have to learn the art of sailing or follow one of the masters. But I really don’t know yet what I will do rigging-wise. There is much to do on deck before it comes to that.

 

One thing I started around Christmas I can share now: Last September we had a small discussion about gun port lids. It was then that I decided to make my Sherbourne looking a bit like the cutter Fly.

My lids are made of 2mm walnut strips, with copper hinges. I utterly failed to make cleats (I even tried to make tiny cleats from 0.3mm eyelets…), so I contacted Dafi (of Victory fame) and bought a brass sheet full of rings, hooks and cleats. They will last me a very long time.

 

 

All lids are shown in an open position; even the two at the bow – when I closed these ports, the too thick upper gunwale was really standing out very clearly.  This has the advantage that there was no need to make actually working hinges (what an excuse!). 

Of course, my gun ports have no inner frame, so a very simple board would do here. I googled a lot of gun ports, where I found many different types even on a Victory, and in the end I decided – simply for aesthetic reasons – to file around three edges to make the lids “lighter”.

 

 

I also made a very simple jig, which I put in the gun ports before gluing the lids to the hull.

 

 

There were many dead ends and discarded pieces, but I’m quite happy now. Old mistakes came around to bite me, though: The curve of the hull does not exactly match the curve of the capping rail, so not all the lids open to the same angle (even with a little bit of cheating). And even worse: In my early days I did not pay enough attention to the upper end of the bulwark patterns that came with the kit. In fact, I found them quite elegant at the time, like a car from the 1970. But now the lids are showing clearly that the rails before the chains lie higher over the gun ports than aft of the chains.

 

 

At the moment my lids are defying gravitation, but I can live with that, at least for a few more days.

Cheers,

Gregor

Edited March 19, 2014 by Gregor

[Gregor]

The question I was mulling over for quite some time was: How to secure the open lids? There is no room between the gun ports and the rail to lead a rope through a hole (or tube) to the inside of the bulwark. Such an arrangement would leave the open lid in a horizontal position. So the rope had to go over the rail.

There is an example for that: Le Renard, a French privateer cutter of 1812, that was rebuilt at St Malo and is now a tourist attraction.

I had Le Renard (enjoy the pictures and imagine a sailing Sherbourne) in mind, when I built my lids.

There was also not enough room to mount the cleats between the rail and the gun ports on the inside (there would be even less room if we followed the original plans). So I put two of them on each side of a gun port: one for the rope that holds the lid open, the other for a rope that would keep the lid close. Curiously, the second one is rarely shown on models (or it was removed when the lids were open?).

 

 

This arrangement made it “easier” to knot the rope around the cleat, two turns are also slung around – probably not enough to close the lids completely, but enough for me.

 

 

Diluted PVE was applied to hold the knot (which is not properly done) together. Now there are nine others to do.

Cheers,

Gregor

 

Edited March 19, 2014 by Gregor

[Jay 1]

Gregor, I love what you came up with for the gun port lids--they look great, and the cleats are a very nice touch!  Also, your jeer bits and pawls are excellent--I will remember your plier technique for making the gears.  I agree with you that the handles might be short and it's likely that the crew extended them for extra leverage--makes sense.   

 

Also, will file away what everyone is mentioning on the belaying points--I have figured that this will be a tricky part of building the ship.  I know the kit's instructions offer no insight into where many of the halyards running ends lead to and are not very helpful in this regard. 

 

Although I have Roger Cole's Alert work, I haven't yet gotten too far into it--I know he disagreed with Goodwin on several points.  From the initial research I've done, some of Goodwin's research is a bit sketchy...  Will perhaps go into that more once I start building, but for now, I'm staying silent until I have more material to support my work. 

 

Thanks again for sharing with us your latest work--it's great!  

 

Cheers,

Jay

[Hollander-jan]

Gregor it looks great. Your build is very nice, and a great reference for me. The port lids are superbly and very well done as the rest of the ship.

Looking forward to your rigging.

 

Jan

[Gregor]

Last week I felt it was the right moment to give my cutter her name. I didn’t like the letters in the kit (metal, font style), and when I saw what Blue Ensign did with his Pickle I started to search for Letraset letters – I thought them to be extinct, but to my astonishment they are still available. They are actually a little bigger than 5mm (23.5p). It’s Times New Roman, also from the 1930ies, but it is an antiqua, Garamond-kind of font, much in fashion since the 16^th century.

 

 

With a graphics software I made a mask on a foil used for overhead projectors (totally 20^th century, also still around), cut on three sides, and placed the individual letters over the mask.

 

 

A cut on the fourth side removed the black letters of the mask and let me rub the golden ones on the transom. Two coats of satin varnish sealed them.

 

 

I became quite an expert in sanding and repainting, but that’s in the past now…

I also made some kind of relieving tackles to secure the tiller – a perfect preparation for gun rigging. The four 2mm single blocks are Chuck’s of the Syren Ship Model Company, and I used Dafi’s hooks with them. I still haven’t mastered the art of seizing yet.

 

 

Then the pin rail crisis appeared. So I tried to copy Dirks knees, and the boom traveller. I aborted the removal of the two cleats after hearing the ugly sound of suffering wood. I think the knees make a very nice (an useful) addition, but it will make the loading and firing of the swivels all the more awkward for my crew. Dirk's and Kester's gun positions are much more reasonable.

And yes, I made sliding hatch number four – a side result of Tony’s post no 139. It’s smaller etc. and turned again (I still read the NMM plans differenty, but I see less conflict with the helmsman this way). 

Now I will have a closer look at the pin rail situation in Dirk’s und Keser’s log.

Thanks for all your help,

Gregor

Edited February 2, 2014 by Gregor

[egkb]

Looking good Gregor, hopefully I'll be following in your footsteps with a Sherbourne in the next few weeks (she's been sitting on my shelve for far too long!)

 

All the Best,

 

Eamonn

[Hollander-jan]

Hoi Gregor,

 

Nice the name looks verry good.  As all of the ship. I wish I good have some off your skills, but I think it is all to do with experience and patience and caracter. Neverteheless a ferry nice pice of work.

 

Jan

[Stockholm tar]

Gregor,

 

Very nice, and you've done a great job with the lettering and stern. Ah, yes, the Great Pinrail Crisis of 13/14 – I remember it well! Don't look too closely at my log though, as I'm far from sure myself – and partly making it up as I go along. The only thing I can say is, that if you're thinking of extending the rail, I urge you to do it now – before installing the mast and rigging!

 

Eamonn,

 

You're Sherbourne's on your shelf, gathering dust!? Well, ok, you do have the Ballahoo to work on. I look forward to when you start on her though.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Stockholm tar

[Hollander-jan]

Hello Gregor, As you me have seen the deck is compleet and I made the holes in the stern like you said to me as well as the semi cirkel for the bowsprite.

 

By the way my kingplanks are like you told me not running trough the middel of the deck.

 

All the best and happy moddeling.

 

Jan

[Gregor]

Great, Jan - just take it as easy as you can, and never hurry (this is supposed to be a relaxing alternative to stressful occupations; at least it is for me).

When I see an especially beautiful detail that another builder has made, I try to copy it, if I can or to make something similar, but simpler - or I let it go all together. This kit has given me almost two years of pleasure so far, and I'm in no hurry to finish quickly. This mind-set allows me even to remove things, to try to make a better version (many do that here, sometimes to an astonishing degree, and I take courage from their example).

Cheers,

Gregor

[Hollander-jan]

Gregor,

 

Thank you for this supporting comments on my side. I appriciate this so much. Like you say  making a copy of what someone else has achieved is nt a bad thing to do. After what I have done with the ship so far I am now in a more relaxed way working on it. The thing was I had to prove that I could do it that  has been the case so far me it not be to the standard of many others I am enjoying it and wil be doing so in the futher. What I also like is this talking about it with all the other people on MSW. The support we give each other is a verry good thing to experience.

 

This little boat gives all of so much joy!

 

Jan

[michael20]

Wow Gregor,

 

What a fantastic build you have going. I'll be looking forward to seeing future updates.

 

Happy Modeling,

Marty G.

[Gregor]

The pin rail situation has been partially solved. There was room for 6 additional pins on each side, five holes can be seen here on the picture. I added another very small piece of wood towards the bow, with a hole for one more pin. 

 

 

I made also a pin rail under the bowsprit, with four pins. My archaic windlass offered no possibility to ad something there. If the rigging develops a complexity that I cannot imagine at the moment, there will be room for more pins on both sides at the bulwark. And yes, the windlass has now standards – when looking at Dirks log I decided not to take a shortcut here.

 

 

Sunday afternoon I spent soldering. The brass swivels are from Caldercraft, treated as shown in Dirks log. My stanchions are simpler, though. I soldered small rings to a brass wire (0.8mm). 

 

 

The problem now is blackening. After trying out the solution by Krick, I got a better result with a mixture prepared by a local chemist: It works perfectly with brass, less so with soldering leftovers. Stanchions, handles and pintles I will have to paint, the swivels themselves are almost clean, with traces of rust … With the big guns I will be extra careful.

Chers,

Gregor

[Stockholm tar]

Gregor,

 

Looking very good, and a nice extension to the pinrail. The swivel guns too are a great improvement.

 

 

[Hollander-jan]

Gregor,

I agree with everyone it all looks very good and well thought out. Those extra pins will come in handy!

 

Jan

Edited February 18, 2014 by Hollander-jan

[Jay 1]

Very nice, Gregor--I really like the lettering and your pin rails look great! The blackening from the chemist looks like it worked really well...have always had mixed results with Krick and other brands.

 

Cheers,

Jay

[Gregor]

Thanks, gentlemen, for the encouragement. Here just a short follow up to the blackening of my guns.

One advantage of my chemist’s solution (no secret, he just looked it up in his database) is that you don’t need to experiment with adding water or heating up the liquid in a microwave oven. It’s cheap also, but there is a price to pay: you have to work outside, and be careful. The ammonia and copper carbonate did their thing within the hour. 

 

 

I had bought my barrels last year from Poland’s RB Model, they are 25.5 mm long and looking quite elegant, in my opinion. This is how the barrels looked coming out of a water bath, before polishing with a cotton towel.

 

 

Of course, now I have to find a way to improve my carriages…

Cheers,

Gregor

[egkb]

They are indeed elegant Gregor, with that lovely depth of shine, I think I'm going to have to follow suit and pick up some brass guns for all the builds when the time comes!

 

Eamonn

 

Edit.. bit of a coincidence Gregor, here I am over on your build and you are over on mine at the same time..

Edited February 24, 2014 by egkb

[Jay 1]

Wow, Gregor those look really nice! Would love to find a similar blackening agent here in the US! Thanks for sharing!

 

Cheers,

Jay